Tactical Deception: Silent Warrior, Book 2 (28 page)

“You tell us,” Dick de Jerk said. “I’d really like to hear how you can explain this one.”

Rico ran back through his memory after he’d chased Sergeant Johnson to his car. He remembered calling the cops, rushing back into the park, tripping over the stroller…the women hurrying past covered from head to toe.

“Where? Where on the stroller were my prints? The only possible place is in the front. I think I righted it after stumbling into it.”

“You think?” Dick de Jerk sneered.

Rico had to ignore the idiot. It was either that or plant his fist in the man’s face. Not a good idea with a .44 already in the way. He focused on Gibson. “Call the lab. Ask. If my prints are anywhere but on the front of the damn thing then I’ll walk my own ass into a cell. And hurry up. We’re wasting time because I think I have a partial plate on our missing Honda.”

Keeping his hands raised, he turned back to the computer screen, ignoring them all. For the first time in his service he wondered if it was worth it all. Everything he’d sacrificed and lost. All of the rough shit he’d had to live through and eat. Just so assholes like Dick de Jerk could run their pompous asses around and the nation’s leaders could haggle over stupid bullshit while good men died, and golfing politicians could stiff the military budget while tossing billions at Wall Street’s screw-ups and banking idiocies.

He closed his eyes and counted to twenty. Okay. He was having a bad day. He should have just stayed in Angie’s hospital room. She mattered more than this insanity.

After the most fantastic night of his life, he was having the shittiest day of his life.

And Angie was at the center of both.

Chapter Thirty-Three

River of Blood Camp

Union County, Georgia

Mari stared, horrified, as four gun muzzles pressed to Roger’s head. For hours now she’d wished that anything, anything at all would have happened to avoid the death sentence she’d brought down on him.

Wished she’d given up on life in that cell in Afghanistan. Wished Dugar had choked her to death in his rage last month. Wished she hadn’t fought so hard to live.

This was all her fault. She hadn’t been honest with Roger about her estrangement from her family and now her deception was going to cost him his life. That she would die with her child unborn was a given.

She struggled fruitlessly against the rough hands keeping her captive.

Roger was on his knees not more than four feet from her. He’d stopped fighting the men holding them prisoner and just looked solemnly at her, his vibrant blue eyes burning with emotion, burning with his spirit, so noble and pure in the surrounding madness.

She stilled her struggle and looked into his eyes. She’d lied to him, had brought him to this point, but he didn’t turn from her. He didn’t forsake or condemn her. He embraced her instead. She remembered their discussion last night that what was in the heart was what counted. Had it just been last night?

Everything within her met his intensity, heart to heart, and nothing else mattered. The preying fears that had become a reality didn’t matter. The evil and pain of the past didn’t matter. The condemnation from her family didn’t matter. Her panic and her fear disappeared as the fire in his gaze heated the center of her soul. Even the pain of losing Neil found ease in the strength and warmth flowing from him. He was unafraid and completely focused on connecting to her. It wasn’t sexual. It was spiritual, peace curled around her heart.

What happened next didn’t matter because she realized that the heart of him, the soul of him, the essence of his being and hers would go on no matter what. Together. In some surreal way, in this bare moment in time, their essences entwined.

How?

She didn’t know.

Maybe souls lived on in another dimension or maybe they became a part of the collective spirit of good and love that permeated even the darkest pits of depravity. However it happened, it didn’t matter.

As she faced life’s final moments with Roger, her spirit knew it was true and that was all she needed to know. They were together.

She met his gaze with understanding, and the full force of the emotions he’d stirred to life inside her for so long now. She let everything else go and for just once, she let herself feel without guilt, to rest in his intensity unafraid.

“Hold your fire,” Fahran shouted. He moved forward and shoved the gun muzzles away from Roger’s head. “Would you deprive my father of the right to restore his honor? Take this man to the shed and lock him inside. I will see to my sister until my father awakens. Hopefully this business will be done before Salaam arrives. If not, everyone
will
respect my father’s wishes and allow him time to tell Salaam of this family matter before you speak of it.”

The men dragged Roger back and Mari shut her eyes. She didn’t want to see him disappear. Nor did she want to look at the disgust in her brother’s eyes. Did he really believe as her father, that Allah was punishing everyone because of her?

Mari was deeply saddened. Her father had not only aged twenty years in only a few, but madness emanated from him, as if his anger had eaten his soul like a cancer.

Had it claimed Fahran as well? He was not the peaceful, prayer-loving brother who’d wanted to teach history at the University that she remembered. He was angry and bitter. A man with no hope who’d polarized toward violence and insanity. A dangerous enemy.

Had the invasion of her country done this to him? Forced him to become more radical when his life would have taken another path? One of peace and teaching?

And what of Maisa? Though their father had never spoken of political matters in front of her, Mari knew her father, as a leader of a tribe, had met with the Taliban and had supported them as long as the radical government let his tribe remain autonomous. He’d been a man who’d wanted control of his world to stay in his own hands.

What had changed to bring him to America as a terrorist? That was the only explanation for their presence here. How had her father gone from a man wanting lines of separation between the Taliban government and his village to marrying Maisa to a man with close, fervent ties to the Taliban? Salaam had been with, and for, the Taliban for years.

Had America’s invasion changed her father from a reclusive village leader to this? Or had his own madness led him here?

She knew from her mother’s stories that life in Afghanistan had been different. At one time before being married, Mari’s mother had attended the university in Kabul. But everything had changed when the Taliban took over.

After living in America, Mari understood even more than before how horrific the Taliban’s oppression of women was. Confining them to their homes, making it illegal for them to work or even go into public alone had nothing to do with Islam or worshiping Allah. She’d heard the reports of women stoned because they’d dared to take a sick child to the doctor or go get food for their starving children.

Change had been, and was, desperately needed.

But then, some change was bad.

So what was the answer? Or was there an answer? Was life a continuous battle between good and bad that never ended?

“You dishonor us all, Maryam,” Fahran yelled and Mari didn’t move. Didn’t react. She kept her eyes shut and turned her thoughts back to Roger’s strength and warmth still burning inside her.

The duct tape was snatched painfully off her mouth and she gasped, snapping her eyes open. Only she and Fahran were left in the building.

He leaned in close, staring her right in the eyes and whispered. “Say nothing. There are ears everywhere.” Then he stood up and spoke louder, harsher. “Stand up and follow me. Disobey and I will have you whipped.”

Mari struggled to rise. Her wrists were still bound behind her back. Her throat was so dry she couldn’t swallow and she’d long passed the sensation of needing to pee or die. Everything within her was in so much pain that she almost couldn’t feel anymore.

Fahran drew a knife and she jerked back from him, bending to protect her child, her heart and her throat. If he was going to stab her, he’d have to stab her in the back.

There was dead silence that lasted so long she was forced to look up at her brother. He stood staring at her, knife in his hand, his face twisted in pain.

He muttered a curse and jerked her hands, slicing through the tape binding her. Everything she thought was too painful to feel screamed to life with a vengeance. Fire burned a path along her every nerve and she gasped desperately to keep from crying out in agony.

She bit into her lip hard. Nausea churned a roiling knot in her stomach and tears burned in her eyes. She wavered on her knees as a second flood of pain ripped through her when she moved her swollen hands to look at her bruised and raw wrists.

Fahran grabbed her arm and helped her stay upright. She didn’t quite understand what was happening. He was still angry, but his manner toward her seemed different. Why had he freed her bonds? Did he not see her as a threat? Did he not realize she would escape in a heartbeat?

“Come with me.” He urged her to her feet and pulled her outside. Blinking against the sunlight, she cleared her vision and caught a glimpse of Roger. Six men with their guns digging into his back marched in the opposite direction from where Fahran dragged her. She stumbled over uneven ground until he pulled her inside another building before releasing her arm.

“I need a bathroom, please, before I shame myself.”

Fahran stepped back in surprise. “Over there. I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

Mari rushed across the room. She used the toilet then faced herself in the mirror, hardly recognizing the haunted woman before her. She washed her face and hands and drank as much as she dared with her stomach roiling in protest. Her raw wrists stung. She looked through the drawers for a weapon, but other than a bar of soap and toilet paper there was nothing.

Fahran knocked on the door. She opened it and exited with as much poise as she could muster. He spoke first.

“If it means anything, it was both Mother and I that sent Rajid back to free you. I hoped the money I sent with him helped you survive.”

Mari shook her head. Her body trembled with the rush of emotion gripping her, an odd mixture of anguish and relief that they hadn’t completely forsaken her. They had cared. Had tried to help. “He never came,” she said softly.

“What?” Fahran jerked in shock.

“Rajid never came. No one ever came. I was very close to death when the Americans invaded the village. A soldier found me before our home was destroyed. He wouldn’t let me die, though. All he had to do was walk away and keep on with his mission, but he didn’t. He stopped fighting and carried me to help, practically forced me to live by the sheer power of his will.”

Fahran cursed then sighed deeply. “Maisa was right. You’ve known only evil and condemnation from your own people.” After a moment more of silence, he spoke again. “So you married this soldier who saved you and he is still sacrificing his last breath to do it again.”

“Yes, I married him,” Mari whispered, her conscience smiting her. She knew full well that Fahran thought Roger was the soldier who’d rescued her. To explain everything would threaten the tenuous connection between her and her brother. Imminent execution was but a breath away and she wasn’t about to jeopardize this chance to save Roger.

A sob from the door stabbed deep into Mari’s heart. Setera, her mother, had come. Mari would know her cry anywhere. She tentatively turned and was swept into comforting arms that a child never forgets, arms she’d yearned to feel so many times over the past few years, arms that were not the same as she remembered.

Setera meant star, and Mari burst into tears. If her father had aged twenty years, her mother had aged forty. A star had fallen. The bright and cheerful woman of loving grace and elegant salt-and-pepper hair had become gaunt and frail, her olive skin sallow and sunken. All joy had drained from her dark eyes; just as all the pepper had disappeared from her hair, leaving lifeless iron strands too heavy for her head to bear.

“I thought I would never see you again. Never know if you were all right or even alive… Praise Allah, you are here. Come, we are wasting time. Stop these tears and let me look at you.” Setera patted Mari’s shoulders and urged her back. “It is a true miracle. You are well. You glow with health. I cannot believe that you are here in America. That Fahran and Maisa found you.”

Maisa spoke from the doorway. “Tell our mother the truth, Fahran. He didn’t bring Maryam here for you, Mother. He brought her here for Father to pun—“

Shouts from the men in the camp rang out. Mullah Salaam Meshood was only minutes away. The chilling fear that gripped her family was palpable. Maisa grabbed the doorframe to stay standing. Fahran went white as a ghost and her mother clutched her arm painfully.

“Hide. You must hide, my child.”

“There is nowhere to hide where she will not be found,” Fahran said.

With the threat of imminent death returning, Mari brought her swollen hands to her stomach, seeking to comfort her child. Secretly praying for her baby.

Her mother’s eyes opened wide. “You are with child, Maryam! You are going to have my grandbaby. Praise Allah, my life is full.” Joy filled her mother’s voice and sparkled in her dark eyes as she smiled and placed her hands on Mari’s stomach too. “You will have twins. I know it in my heart.”